Researchers Make The Case For Video Games As Educational Tools

Two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are touting the value of video games as learning tools.

Constance Steinkuehler, an associate professor of digital media at UW, said video games, now a $25-plus billion industry and growing rapidly, are now the primary medium of entertainment for youth audiences.

And their interactive nature, she said, is an opportunity for parents and teachers in an increasingly technological society.

“Video games are the one single medium that can convert screen time into activity time,” she said.

Kurt Squire, a professor of digital media also at UW-Madison, said that while competition remained a big draw of video games, their increasingly social nature was also giving rise to games that focus on cooperation and collaboration.

“It’s a way that people and families play together,” he said.

The interactive stories many games come with also nurture fantasy and curiosity, he said, and games as a whole are essentially extended exercises in problem-solving.

Games might motivate children to learn skills they might not be as interested in in a classroom context, Steinkuehler said. Games that come with communities, fandoms and fan-created texts, such as manuals and fiction can encourage literacy, for example.

“If you start to look at … the reading level of texts that are involved in games like 'World of Warcraft,' … the reading level’s right around high school graduation (level),” she said.

Steinkuehler's research results bear that out, according to a study of active video game players’ literacy in reading game-related materials.

“So-called struggling readers in school were reading up to eight grades above their head and they were reading with near perfect comprehension,” she said. “And if you unpack why, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they care enough to be persistent in the face of challenge.”

For parents who want their children to reap educational benefits of video games without risking potential negative results, Squire recommends engagement above all else.

“How you play games and how you leverage game play to build on kids’ or people’s interests and extend them into new kinds of activities that go beyond the game are where they’re most powerful,” Squire said.

For example, he said, children interested in "MineCraft," an interactive structure-building game, might be steered to an interest in design or programming, while a child interested in historical games might also enjoy books on history or museum visits.

“The real big thing is playing with them and trying to understand where they’re hooked into things, and using that as a springboard into new kinds of learning activities,” he said.

The real big thing is playing with them and trying to understand where they’re hooked into things and using that as a springboard into new kinds of learning activities.”

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